Tip of the Month
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Believe it or not, things are the way we see them. A man once asked me to teach his horse to pick up a hat. “No problem” I said, and proceeded to get the horse to take the hat in his mouth. I asked the horse to let me have the hat and when he did I rewarded him. The man watched closely. I then gave the hat to the man and asked him to drop it on the ground. I said, “When the horse picks it up, ask him to give it to you, reward him and tell him he’s a good boy and the lesson will be complete”. The man did exactly as he was asked and the horse responded correctly, as expected, except for one little thing. When the horse picked up the hat, he began to shake it as if to say “Look at me, I did it!” The man yelled out “No! No!” “What’s wrong?” I asked. “ Can’t you see” he said, “the horse is being defiant.” What he saw was a defiant horse. What I saw was a horse with a hat in his mouth. Get the picture? Almost every horse that comes to my place for training will lay down and roll in the arena. Most of the time, the owner sees this as a bad thing. In reality, if they could get next to their horse when he does this, point to the ground and say “Lay down”, give him a treat when he does and tell him he’s a good boy, they may have just taught their horse to lay down. This not only means that their horse has learned something new, but now he’s more likely to wait for the cue to lay down when they are present. The same thing goes for rearing. Maybe your horse meant to be bad, maybe not, but put a cue to it. You might as well, he’s already rearing and you can’t turn and run. You can teach him not to rear later. Now it could just very well be that you have a horse that lays down and rears up on command with absolutely no work involved. Pretty impressive if I must say so myself. So you see, reality is really the way we perceive it. If you only see the good you will turn the bad thing into a good thing, and that’s the way I see it.
Be good to your horse Dennis |
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